


we're going nowhere

by patrokla



Category: The Libertines
Genre: Depression, Gen, M/M, Reunions, Soulmates, pre-2015 though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-02
Updated: 2015-10-09
Packaged: 2018-04-18 14:56:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4710086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patrokla/pseuds/patrokla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The summer that Pete returns is also the summer that Carl ends up in the tabloids, walking back from the store with what his mother later tells him is ‘a disturbing amount of whiskey’ and a single tomato. The bizarre contrast is probably what catapulted the event from the usual ‘bored paparazzi take pictures of reclusive ex-Libertine’ status to the ‘Barat gone mad? What is he going to do with that tomato??’ headlines plastered across every rag in the country.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. in a haze

**Author's Note:**

> I wasn't going to post anything until someone else had put something up, because I feel awkward about clogging up the tag, but I had an awful day today and needed to do something. I apologize for all of this, especially the double contraction. And any Americanisms, as I'm sure they've snuck in. I might write a bit more in this 'verse, might not.

When Pete returns - properly returns - it feels like the end of the longest winter Carl’s ever known. In actuality, it’s near the end of summer. Festival time, as they’d once thought of it.  
  
Carl tries to avoid those now. Any public appearances mean questions, questions like ‘What’s your next musical project?’ and ‘Have you heard anything about Peter?’ in endless variations. He had enough of that to last him a lifetime when the Libertines were together, now that they’re not it overwhelms him completely.  
  
Staying at home isn’t so bad, though. As a child he’d never had many friends, so it’s a bit like returning to his natural state. He settles into loneliness comfortably, aided by whiskey and Rimbaud. Lou Reed, when he can handle some music. He’s mostly given it up, though, along with the coke. They were both bad habits that put him somewhere adjacent to reality, and failed to actually keep him there.  
  
He doesn’t have a television - he’d flat out refused to buy one, Lucie’s insistence that he make his flat look less like ‘a den of depressed iniquity’ be damned. He’s too self-aware to act out death on the stairs. Not at the age of 30, anyways. Carl knows what kind of image people must have of him, but he refuses to play into them completely. Plus he’s always had a sneaking suspicion that if he did buy a tv, Pete would somehow know and mock him for it. Never mind the distance and the fact that the last time anyone had heard from Pete he’d been wandering around in a daze in some field in the country, too high to do much when one of his neighbours had called up the press.  
  
The photographs had not been flattering. Carl, too tired to be angry, almost too tired to be sad, had sympathized. All the recent ‘candid shots’ of him have been terribly unflattering.  
  
But that’s in the past. Carl tries not to think about the past, although he will admit that he’s placed himself in the unenviable position of having an unappetizing present and a negligible future with which to think about instead. He reads, instead. And drinks. And reads some more, until some passage reminds him of something he’s reading and drinking to avoid, and so he drinks some more. Drinks until the words are stumbling off the pages and it seems like a good idea to put a record on.  
  
He’d woken up once with ‘Down in Albion’ playing on repeat. Turned out that Kate Moss’s voice was the perfect thing to compound a hangover.  
  
More often, it’s old demos. Or the few rough attempts at recording that he’d attempted, after the last sham of a tour with Stanthony. Not that he’s got anything against Stan, nice enough for an American, but the hole that Pete had created when he’d torn himself away from Carl was raw at the edges, and shaped in such a way that no one else could fit themself in.  
  
They aren’t good, the recordings. Worse than any demo he’d made with Pete, a fact that gnaws at him. Carl’s self-esteem has never been particularly resilient, and hearing over and over again that Pete had been the spark, the poet, the real songwriter, well. It had been battered to pieces. Listening to himself mumble clumsy lines better suited to the likes of fucking Blur hadn’t particularly improved matters.  
  
The summer that Pete returns is the summer that Carl smashes his last guitar to bits against the bathroom sink, in lieu of smashing his face in again. He’d been sorely tempted to, but the flat had felt so empty. He hadn't wanted to call his own ambulance.  
  
The summer that Pete returns is also the summer that Carl ends up in the tabloids, walking back from the store with what his mother later tells him is ‘a disturbing amount of whiskey’ and a single tomato. The bizarre contrast is probably what catapulted the event from the usual ‘bored paparazzi take pictures of reclusive ex-Libertine’ status to the ‘Barat gone mad? What is he going to do with that tomato??’ headlines plastered across every rag in the country.  
  
What he’d done with the tomato was cut it up for a sandwich. Not that anyone had actually asked him.  
  
That’s the first thing Pete asks him when he opens the door, one horrendously sunny Tuesday morning:  
  
’So what did you do with that tomato?’  
  
Carl’s so taken aback at Pete being there, at his appearance, at the sheer audacity of Peter bloody Doherty, disappeared for months and then reappearing on Carl’s doorstep to demand answers about what he does with his produce, that he blurts out the truth.  
  
‘Needed it for a sandwich,’ he says, which makes Pete look slightly disappointed.  
  
‘I was hoping it was for some kind of perverse something-or-other,’ he says, leaning on the door frame and looking slightly obscene. ‘The rumors are that you aren’t much of a libertine these days, Carlos.’  
  
‘Yeah, well, the rumors are that you probably died in a field of exposure,’ Carl says, unable to keep the bitterness out of his voice. ‘I suppose being a libertine fell by the wayside for the both of us.’  
  
‘Is that what everyone thought?’ Pete asks, smiling faintly. ‘Me, dead in a field. Could be quite romantic if I timed it right, don’t you think?’  
  
Carl looks at him steadily. The shock is starting to fade and several years worth of pent-up annoyance (and heartbreak, and joy) are beginning to bubble up inside of him. For a moment he’s strongly tempted to punch Pete.  
  
‘So what did you do?’ he asks, instead. ‘If you didn’t die in a field and return as a ghost to haunt me, that is.’  
  
‘If I wanted to haunt you I wouldn’t’ve shown up in the morning, would I?’ Pete retorts, mock-insulted. ‘I’ll tell you all about it once we’ve gone in, unless you want your neighbours to find out about my exploits.’  
  
Carl shudders at the thought, completely unconsciously, and Pete laughs.  
  
‘Yeah alright, come in,’ he says after a moment, and Pete straightens up. He looks taller, somehow, lanky in a healthy way. His skin looks less sallow, even. He looks young.  
  
Carl, walking into his living room and suddenly seeing it as Pete must be, bottles strewn about, nest of blankets on the couch and stacks of books piled high next to it, feels a bit pathetic.  
  
It makes him mean. That’s his excuse, anyways, for saying what he says next.  
  
‘So you’re clean?’  
  
He pulls the blankets onto the floor and sits down on one end of the couch. Pete clenches his jaw and goes to sit at the other end.  
  
‘Why, want to know if it’s alright to be seen in public with me?’  
  
‘Want to know if you’re going to steal everything the second I go to make tea,’ Carl says. It’s unfair, fuck, he knows that. And yet…  
  
‘Don’t think I could get much for all these empty whiskey bottles,’ Pete says nastily, and God. They fall back into their old patterns so easily.  
  
‘Steal the bloody couch if you like, it’s probably worth a bit. But I can’t do this if you’re still…'  
  
‘Fair enough,’ Pete says after a pause. He sighs. ‘I am. Clean, that is. I wouldn’t have come back if I wasn’t. I wouldn’t do that to you, Carlos.’  
  
Never mind that he had, twice over at least. But Carl’s had a lot of practice not thinking about the past, so he tamps all of that down and takes a deep breath.  
  
‘Alright. How about that tea, then?’


	2. a sucker for a smile

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He’s made it worse many a time for poor Carlos.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't going to post more of this, but it's late and I just watched Carl be an Embarrassment on periscope, so I'm feeling good. Here's a tiny interlude from Pete's POV. Either one or two parts after this one, I think...

For a free spirited poet and libertine, Pete has always thought he worries an awful lot. About money, mostly. And Carl, of course, but that’s a foregone addition to everything Pete feels anything about. People Pete loves? Kate, his sister, Drew, his mum. And Carl, of course. People Pete hates? Also Kate, all tabloid journalists, most of his old landlords. And Carl, of course. People Pete dreams about? You get the picture.  
  
Generally speaking, Pete’s never been one to stand on his feelings. Life is too short to not say most of the things on your mind to whatever audience you deem appropriate at the time. But when he’d been looking through the Sun for his latest lambasting and come across the picture of Carl instead, looking horribly pale and scratchy, one hand holding a tomato and the other filled with bags of familiar bottles, well. He’d felt that familiar tendril of worry that only sprang up when Carl was clearly depressed, and then he’d felt hesitant.  
  
He’d stopped to think, and the first thought that came to mind was - _what if I make it worse?_ He hates hates _hates_ that there’s even a possibility of that, but truthfully he’s made it worse many a time for poor Carlos.  
  
_What if I make it better?_  
  
An equally terrifying thought that Pete can’t tear his mind from for days. He’s in a flat in Montmartre but he might as well have been decomposing in a field for all the good that being in Paris did for him. He worries over that thought, he’s petrified by it. At some point during their years together Carl became…not an unknown, never that. But unpredictable. Or Pete’s mind changed too much to be able to predict him. Carl would blame it on the brown, of course he would, but Pete’s clean now and it’s not doing him any good in the field of Understanding Carl Barat.  
  
Someone’s got to do it, though, and Pete has never particularly trusted other people with Carl. A pity, since Carl vacillates between trusting no one and everyone with himself. A sucker for a smile, a shot, and a friendly touch, that boy.  
  
Yeah, someone’s got to do it. So, not long after Pete sees the pictures, he sets off for London. He might as well do his worrying in person, if only so he can look at Carl every morning and say ‘look at the newest grey hair you've given me!’.

(Deep down, where Pete's unique blend of fantasy, fiction, and the occasional uncomfortable fact have failed to completely permeate, he knows that there are many other reasons spurring him on to London. He will always want to help Carl, always and of course, and/but he knows that Carl will reach out to him like a drowning man reaching for a lifeguard. It's been a long time since he's held Carl's attention and adoration, and even longer since he's been the sole focus for both of those. Who could blame him for missing the good old days?)


	3. you cut your arm again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He doesn’t want to play games, he wants -

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm still not 100% happy with this but it could take literal years to polish it the right way, so here we are. Short epilogue after this, I think.

Once upon a time, Pete wormed his way so close into Carl’s head and heart and everything else that was worth anything that he could pull Carl into his world - the world Pete had built for himself out of the good scraps of this one, and sometimes the bad. It didn’t always work, but very often they’d been able to curtain off the rest of reality, curl into each other with the ease of childhood friends and old lovers.  
  
Carl, filling up the kettle with water and idly keeping an ear out for Pete in the living room, misses that so much it’s a physical ache in his chest. If there ever were good old days, those were it.  
  
He’s wondered, too often of late, what it was that made him run straight into the arms of fame when they opened for him. Was he frightened of what he had with Pete? What he could have? Was he lonely? Tired of the codependency? Really just a cunt at heart?  
  
He thinks, suddenly, that he could ask Pete. Pete, who is sitting in his living room and probably making a mess in some way. The possibilities (the power?) rush over him, leaving him dizzy with it.  
  
‘Pete,’ he calls. ‘Do you think I’m a bastard?’  
  
There’s silence for a moment, and then, from right behind him:  
  
‘Only when you can help it.’  
  
He spins around in surprise, only to find himself inches away from a smirking Pete.  
  
‘What about when I can’t help it?’ he asks curiously.  
  
‘Well,’ Pete says, drawing the word out. ‘I tend to focus on other things when that’s the case.’  
  
His eyes flick down, and Carl could swear that they rest for a few moments on his mouth. Well. They’ve always been fast to fall into their old patterns.  
  
He can feel that same place in his chest that aches for the past dragging him forward towards Pete, into Pete. That same inexorable force that has always pushed them together and pulled them apart, constantly at the mercy of the impartial laws of physics.  
  
Pete can feel it too, Carl’s sure of it. He’s staring down at Carl with a look that sends a hint of unease through Carl, the tension of being caught in a trap with one way out that’s only made bearable by the knowledge that the chase to come will be full of thrills.  
  
It would take only one more motion to tumble headlong into that familiar dance, and so Carl moves -  
  
back, bare elbow hitting the stove top as the kettle begins to whistle.  
  
‘Oh fuck!’ he exclaims, craning his neck to glimpse reddened skin where he’d touched the hot burner.  
  
‘Here, let me look,’ Pete offers, and he takes a step forward, hands stretching out towards Carl’s arm. The kettle is still whistling, and the pain is flaring on Carl’s skin and the metal of the stove is pressing against the small of his back.  
  
There’s only one way out of the trap.  
  
Carl bolts.  
  
‘Burn cream,’ he says, waving in the direction of the bathroom. ‘In the cabinet. Please.’  
  
‘Alright,’ Pete says, strangely gently. He turns around and steps out of the kitchen, and Carl lets out a long breath.  
  
It’s always been like this, he thinks as he takes lifts the kettle up, filling two mugs with the steaming water. Pete advancing, Carl retreating, then running past Pete, letting Pete chase him. And then, inevitably, one of them turns on the other - Pete out of frustration, Carl out of misplaced anger, resentment, and shame - and when they finally collide it’s a rough tangle and tear, mad scramble of limbs and skin on skin. Sweat slick, ragged fingernails down backs and hips, bite marks that bruise. Not bad, rarely _bad_ , but limited.  
  
Carl likes being chased, sometimes. Pete likes chasing him. But sometimes he wished they could’ve just met in the middle, at least a few times. One extreme or the other, always, and it exhausts Carl, past the bone-deep tiredness that has sunk its claws into him and into some higher plane of weariness that’s settled in his heart.  
  
He doesn’t want to play games, he wants -  
  
Pete walks back through the kitchen doorway, holding a tube of burn cream in one hand.  
  
‘Did you know that your bathroom has cockroaches?’ he asks, looking mildly disgusted in a curious, schoolboy way.  
  
‘Ah. Yes,’ Carl says, embarrassed. ‘It’s, that’s a new thing.’  
  
It’s not, and the way Pete’s mouth twists with sympathy (not pity, Carl prays, let it not be pity) tells him that the lie was absolutely transparent.  
  
‘Here, let me,’ Pete says, grasping Carl’s right arm and turning it. His movements are slow and steady, fingers spreading the cream out like one might pet a skittish cat. _Gentling a spooked horse_ , Carl thinks suddenly.  
  
‘Pete,’ he says, watching Pete’s fingers on his skin. ‘Why did you come here?’  
  
The fingers still for half a second, but it takes Pete much longer to answer.  
  
‘I saw those pictures, Carlos,’ he says finally. ‘Knew you were in a bad way, and you never do your own shopping if you can help it, so I knew you were alone. And you know me, can never resist a damsel in distress…'  
  
He trails off and Carl finally looks up at him. There’s a sad little smile playing round Pete’s mouth, but his eyes are serious and focused on his hand.  
  
‘I missed you,’ Carl admits. ‘I never stopped.’  
  
It feels strange to say the words. He spent years choking them down whenever he was around Pete, but they come out so easily now. He notes idly that Pete’s fingers have moved up his arm, thumb rubbing against his skin in tiny circles.  
  
It’s that last, perfectly inconsequential touch that does him in.  
  
He collapses towards Pete, curling against him and letting Pete’s arms fold around him.  
  
They don’t speak, don’t even move, as Carl exhales in deep shuddering breaths. He’s been far beyond tears for a long time now, far beyond anything except these rattling gasps.  
  
He can hear Pete whispering something, words of comfort most likely, and the tone grounds him. The presence grounds him like nothing good has in a long time.  
  
‘I missed you,’ he mumbles again into Pete’s shirt. Pete holds him more tightly and presses a kiss against the side of his head. Carl tenses slightly, waiting for Pete to pull back, to slide a hand down…but he doesn’t.  
  
He doesn't, and Carl relaxes further against him. It feels good to be held. For the first time in a very long time, it feels good to _be_.


	4. a peterish interlude - 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There’s a part of Pete that is certain the possibility of worst is contained in this flat, is still contained in Carl and not far beneath the surface.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As it turns out, this is not the end. There's a part after this, which I've just finished writing and is considerably long, and then a sort of epilogue in a...different style. As usual, apologies for the Americanisms, I do try to keep them to a minimum. Also for that last line as well, I'm not really sure about it. And thank you for all the kind comments, they're very encouraging to read.
> 
> Warnings for: non graphic mentions of self-harm, a mildly gruesome mention of the Welsh sink incident, and some blasphemous sentiments. So, the usual.

Carl’s flat feels like a dirty little secret, and not a fun one. It’s late, verging on very early, and Pete's sitting on the sofa with his legs going numb. Carl’s head is lying on them, body curled up on the cushions like a child’s.

It feels different, this time around. Pete’s walked through a door to pick up the pieces of Carl and mash them together into some semblance of a person a hundred times, a thousand times. Carl’s always been rubbish at taking care of himself, and Pete could always find something beautiful and darkly appealing in his helplessness.

This time is different. They’re older now, for one. Carl’s getting lines at the corners of his eyes, faint ones that Pete wants to trace with his thumb. Things are worse, for another. Or - not worse, maybe. Worse, _worst_ , was blood on the bathroom sink, flaps of skin and eye mixed up like a Picasso painting, glass on the floor.

There’s a part of Pete that is certain the possibility of worst is contained in this flat, is still contained in Carl and not far beneath the surface. It frightens him, his mind ambling into every bloody alternative that could have awaited him if he’d waited longer.

Death on the stairs. He doesn’t say it to Carl, doesn’t want to, but he thinks it. Sitting on the sofa with musty blankets piled at one end, trash and worn novels scattered across the floor. There’s no guitar anywhere, but he’d found a tuning peg lying in the corner of the room like an incriminating finger bone.

He’d seen the shadowy promise of worst when he ventured into the back bedroom, thinking to make up the bed so they could avoid trying to fit two grown men on the living room furniture. The floor had been covered in shattered glass, and there were drops of dried blood sprinkled like rose petals on the greying coverlet. He’d closed the door and returned to the living room in a hurry, didn’t mention it to Carl because there was nothing to be said. He knows that it is Carl's shame, and because it is Carl's it is Pete's as well - shared between them and twice as heavy for it.

There’s no Arcadia to be found in Carl’s flat, only an overwhelming sense of guilt and regret. Pete knows, knew the second he stepped through the door, that he has to take Carl away from here. Somewhere with noise and life and colour, where Carl can’t sit silent and still for hours at a time, drinking himself to death by way of cheap whiskey.

Pete runs a hand over Carl’s hair, smiling slightly as Carl presses closer to him unconsciously. He’s missed Carlos, and once upon a time he would’ve missed all of this - Carl, shattered and needing him. Even knocking on Carl’s door, Pete missed this. But he's grown, and whatever motives his mind had concocted fell to the wayside at the first glimpse of Carl’s face. Carl suffers more beautifully than anyone Pete’s ever known, like Christ on the cross; St Teresa’s ecstasy.

This isn’t that, this is death by suffocation. Carl lying back in a grave and letting the dirt be piled on top of him. It offends and worries Pete by turns, only makes him more determined to truly fix Carl this time around. Perversely, that it’s the worst he’s ever seen gives him hope. He feels that somewhere in the haze of the last few years he’s gained perspective. Knows how to better handle Carl now - if Carl will give him the chance.

Ah, but he will, Pete thinks, looking down at the tousled dark hair. Carl’s never met a cliff he hasn’t tried to jump off of, but he’s always paused that extra moment to let Pete tackle him to the ground.

The important part is rekindling the spark in Carl’s eyes, even the faintest glimmer will do. Often has one torch cresting the hill meant ten thousand not far behind, and Pete longs to fall to his knees at the full splendour of that outpouring of light.


	5. a loyal crew

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ‘Well we can’t stay here,’ Pete says. ‘It’ll kill you, Carl. And you’ve got no clean dishes.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not sure if I've nudged this properly into shape, but I did give it a go. Just one bit after this, but this is the end of the normal prose. 
> 
> Warnings for: a hurried and vague summary of Plato's theory about soulmates. If it was Plato's, I could be misremembering things. Also, an nsfw line - only the one, though.

Carl wakes in the morning to the familiar protesting ache of his spine, unhappy at constantly being twisted so as to fit on the sofa, and to the unfamiliar feeling of a warm weight resting on his neck.  
  
As he blinks his eyes open balefully, lids heavy with natural resentment of the existence of mornings, things begin to fly back into his head. Pete showing up. The burn on his hand. The chase - the disruption of the chase - and Pete not pushing, for once in their lives.  
  
And other things. Pete had gone to make up the bed, and come back looking grim. Carl hadn’t known why, for a few moments, until he remembered why he’d migrated to the living room. What Pete must’ve seen. The blood had to have dried by now, but shards of glass would still be scattered across the room.  
  
Carl doubts that Pete stayed long enough to see the deeply creased Polaroid of the two of them nearly torn in two right down the middle, lying somewhere near the head of the bed. It makes Carl feel a little sick to think of it; one of the last few mementos he had of the old days and he’d been drawn to its destruction as fast as he’s drawn to his own. Although maybe it’s because the picture holds a little piece of him, a Carl that no longer exists but in photos and memories.  
  
_Like a Horcrux_ , Carl thinks suddenly, and he lets out an amused huff, jostling the hand - Pete’s hand - that had been resting on his neck.  
  
'Finally awake, Carlos?’  
  
‘Mmm,’ Carl hums, feeling unexpectedly at ease with things. He stretches, feline, legs sliding across the cushions and the tension in his back receding slightly.  
  
‘Do you remember when we went away to Paris?’ Pete asks, voice wandering and wispy with recollection.  
  
‘Yeah, you…’ Carl trails off, feeling his cheeks warm. He hadn’t thought about that in awhile.  
  
‘I fucked you against the window of the hotel room,’ Pete says, sounding amused. ‘You drew the curtains back, if I recall correctly. Vain bastard.’  
  
Carl blushes further, recalling the feeling of the sun-warmed glass and Pete’s hands wandering across his body. It had been one of their gentler times, probably because they’d fought and scratched each other up over _Can’t Stand Me Now_ the night before.  
  
‘Was a good weekend,’ he mumbles as Pete buries his fingers into Carl’s hair.  
  
‘I suppose,’ Pete says. ‘I was thinking about it because I was trying to figure out where we should go.’  
  
‘Go?’ Carl asks, suddenly feeling much more awake.  
  
‘Well we can’t stay here,’ Pete says. ‘It’ll kill you, Carl. And you’ve got no clean dishes.’  
  
‘I can’t just leave London, Peter,’ Carl says, sitting up abruptly.  
  
‘Sure you can,’ Pete says, running a hand down Carl’s back. ‘Unless…is there a girl?'  
  
He asks it mockingly, but with a touch of hesitance that keeps Carl from flaring up.  
  
‘There’s no girl,’ he says tiredly. ‘But we’re not kids. We can’t just go running off where we please.’  
  
‘Carl, nobody controls where the good ship Albion sails, nor what ports she stops at.’ Pete says firmly.  
  
‘Don’t know if she _can_ still sail,’ Carl says, dropping his eyes to his knees. ‘She’s been adrift for a long time, might not be sea-worthy anymore…'  
  
‘Lucky she’s got a loyal crew to fix her up then, aye?’ Pete says, jostling Carl with an elbow. ‘C’mon, Carlos. We could go anywhere! We could go to Russia!’  
  
‘Russia?’ Carl asks, startled. ’S’too cold.’  
  
‘Alright, Spain, then,’ Pete says magnanimously. ‘Or Tunisia, maybe. Somewhere warm, where the press can’t be bothered to go looking for us.’  
  
‘Oh fuck, the press,’ Carl groans. ‘They probably took pictures of you coming here, they’ll be camped out like the fucking vultures they are if we leave,’  
  
‘When we leave,’ Pete corrects. ‘And I’ve taken care of that. I called Drew, he said he’ll provide a distraction.’  
  
‘Wha- never mind, don’t tell me,’ Carl says.  
  
Pete laughs.

‘Alright, I won’t tell you. But it’ll be in the papers.’  
  
‘Fuck the papers,’ Carl says.  
  
‘Mmm, I can think of something that’d be more fun,’ Pete says, and Carl thinks for a second - this, this is it. Waits for Pete’s clever fingers on his jaw, and when they come-  
  
‘Carl,’ Pete says gently, tilting his face up. ‘Carl, look at me.’  
  
Carl raises his eyes slowly, until they meet Pete’s wide, long-lashed ones.  
  
‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ he says reproachfully, which is such a blatantly ridiculous statement that Carl is filled with twin urges to laugh and cry at it.  
  
‘How can you honestly say that, after everything?’ he asks. ‘I couldn’t say that to you with a clean conscience, and I doubt you’d believe it if I did.’  
  
‘Maybe not,’ Pete admits, ‘but I wouldn’t…I’d still give you the benefit of the doubt, Carl. I know I’ve hurt you, hurt you terribly a hundred times over, but I love you. I don’t want to hurt you, Carlos, I want to help. That’s why I’m here.’  
  
His words do nothing to soothe, and as Carl sits there on his sofa, surrounded by the debris of a wasted life, he’s reminded of every one of those hundred times that Pete had hurt him. How they all drove him back here, back to this forsaken grey wasteland that he seems doomed to wander for the rest of eternity, with occasional breaks when Pete feels like dropping by to ‘help’ him, showing him hints of a world with color and then running back to the brown and leaving Carl behind every time. He’s fallen for this line before, a hundred times over. No more.  
  
‘Help me! That’s fucking rich, coming from you,’ Carl snarls. ‘I don’t need your help, and I don’t want it. I want you to fuck back off to whatever crack den you came from, and stop showing up at my door like - like -‘  
  
He falters, surge of anger abating as he meets Pete’s even gaze. It’s so hard to sustain any emotion these days, and anger is the hardest of them all. Even harder when he doesn’t have Pete to work off of, as he’s always had in the past. Pete’s never resisted a good shouting match, especially when it concerns whose fault it is that everything in their lives becomes ragged and ruined somehow; which of them has the Midas touch and which the Medusa’s gaze.  
  
It’s all so exhausting, every bit of it. Being lost and lonely without Pete, being angry with him. _I’m too tired for this,_ Carl thinks. In the back of his mind, somewhere, some distant voice whispers _too tired and too old._  
  
‘Ah, fuck it,’ he sighs finally, eyes darting away from Pete's. ‘I need a drink.’  
  
He stumbles off the sofa and into the kitchen. There’s got to be one last bottle of Jameson’s hidden somewhere in the empty cupboards.  
  
There isn’t, and so he chances a look into the fridge, just in case. It's sadly devoid of anything but a tiny colony of grey mold near the back, and a bruised banana.  
  
Defeated, he shuts the fridge and rests his forehead against it, enjoying the coolness of the metal. He’s fucking it all up, he can feel it. It feels impossible to stop, impossible to trust Pete with anything trivial, let alone something as vital as his heart.  
  
Because that’s what will happen, if he goes back to the couch and falls into Pete’s arms like some swooning maiden, and they go off to Spain or Paris or wherever. He’ll be Pete’s, utterly and completely, and Pete won’t be his because he belongs to someone else. Some _thing_ else.  
  
What Carl misses about the old days, more than easy companionship, more than losing himself for days and nights in the world only he and Pete inhabited, more than lazy Sunday mornings and bottles of whiskey passed back and forth, more than all of that - he misses being able to trust Pete. Trust him with any and every part of Carl.  
  
‘It’ll never be the same,’ he mutters to himself.  
  
‘Well, no, Carl. It won’t be. It’s not supposed to be.’  
  
He spins around and narrows his eyes at Pete, who looks annoyed and annoyingly unremorseful.  
  
‘ _We’re_ not the same, Carl. We’ve changed and grown - and that’s what’s supposed to happen! Do you think I don’t ever miss how things used to be? Think I haven’t spent so many days and nights wishing I could go back? Not even to fix it, just to enjoy it. But that’s impossible, Carl, and if we could go back we’d be out of place.’  
  
Pete takes a breath, face flushed from his exclamations. He hasn’t moved towards Carl, still stands in the doorway.  
  
‘I don’t want to go back, anymore,’ he says softly. ‘I want to go forward, with you. And I can’t do that - _we_ can’t do that if you won’t trust me even a little. You have to give me a chance, Carl, just one more. Give _yourself_ a chance.’

He smiles faintly, eyes going distant for a moment, then focusing again on Carl.

'Do it for the Albion, yeah?'  
  
The words, an oft-repeated mantra that had gotten them through the best and worst of times, startle Carl out of his own memories, away from the sticky clutches of the past. He looks at Pete, really looks at him. His angles are beginning to soften and his hair is going patchy with grey on one side, but it's still Pete underneath it all. They'd spent endless summers and winters in their own world, once. They'd lived a better life together than Carl's ever lived alone.

Carl has spent a long time thinking that it's some personal failing of his that makes him so incapable of doing things right on his own. Maybe it isn't. Plato wrote that every human soul is only half of its rightful whole, something Pete used to muse about all the time. No one would expect a one-legged man to stand up and walk with nary a wobble, and God knows that he and Pete have wobbled more often than not. He'd built a whole man, a whole world with Pete once. Maybe - maybe, he thinks, suddenly breathless. Maybe they could build something again. Maybe Pete is right and they’ve learned from the last time around. Maybe-  
  
He takes a step towards Pete. Watches as Pete steps towards him, slowly, wordlessly. There's no cornering this time. No chase and surrender. Just Pete and Carl in a grimy kitchen, drawn towards each other until the lines of their bodies melt together.  
  
‘Okay,’ Carl says into the quiet. Watches Pete’s eyes watch him as he leans in and up a few centimetres more, sheds the remaining vestiges of distance and presses his lips to Pete’s gently, so gently.  
  
‘One more chance. For the Albion.’  
  
Pete smiles against his mouth like Carl’s just promised him Arcadia.

And maybe he has.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Before The Libertines, before the madness and the money, before the room started filling up with people we didn’t know, Peter and I would romanticize about Albion. I don’t even know when we first started saying it. It was something that, many years ago, Peter and I, if we were trying to motivate the other to do something, we’d say: ‘Do it for the Albion’, and it would work. It would spur us into action even if it did sound as if we were talking about West Brom."
> 
> Carl Barat, Threepenny Memoir


	6. epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Libertines Reunited?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's done! I can't believe it's done...
> 
> Thanks to everyone who's commented, I never would've finished this without that encouragement.

**Libertines Reunited?**  
by Amity Newman  
4:17 PM  
September 14th, 20—  
  
**Pete Doherty** and **Carl Barat** , ex-frontmen of **The Libertines** and supposed ex-best friends, were spotted together in **Heathrow Airport** earlier today.  
  
It’s been several years since the break-up of **The Libertines** and no public interaction has happened between the two since their last show, leaving fans to wonder if it truly marked the end of the infamous relationship between **Barat** and **Doherty**.  
  
Wonder no more, because several eyewitness accounts place the two men at the London airport early this morning, with guitar cases and bags in hand. **Doherty** apparently looked “good, not at all strung-out” - a surprising report considering he was last spotted in a field outside **Basingstoke** in a rather compromising state.  
  
**Barat** , who also made tabloid headlines recently after an unusual shopping trip, seemed “thin, but he looked happy” according to another eyewitness.  
  
Is it possible that **Barat** and **Doherty** are back together for good, and getting away to work on a new album? Or just headed to somewhere sunny for some R &R? Whatever the reason, fans of the band will be pleased by this reunion, and no doubt hopes are raising across the globe that we’ll soon see the iconic duo on stage together once more.

 

 **UPDATE** 7:23 AM 15/9: **Doherty** posted the following on his official forum  French Dog Writtles, under the pseudonym heavyhorse:

Good news for the less-than modern man:  
against the odds, arcady's reborn in those loyal and wavering hearts these last dawny nights.  
a hopeful carlos and i have set sail on the goodship to far and foreign lands, seeking warmer climes and clearer skies  
“stop typing and look out the window” he says, he has been humming our songs the whole night, restless oddly boy  
  
singing now "no more fumbling round anymore  
everyone’s gonna be happy but of course"  
  
"that’s the wrong lyrics"  
  
"nono that’s the new lyrics"  
  
the direwolves have been driven away, and i believe we will keep em at bay with hearts n melodies and sheets…ah but indiscreet trees throw their leaves gainst the window panes - and so off again.  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- The ‘indiscreet trees’ line comes from Rimbaud’s ‘the first evening’ which starts out: ‘she had very few clothes on/and big indiscreet trees/threw their leaves against the panes/slyly, very close, very close...'  
> Very subtle, Pete.
> 
> \- Originally this ended with the line 'Related links: Babyshambles bassist arrested for 'disturbing the peace' in bizarre incident...'  
> It didn't fit with the tone, but I still wanted to share it. 
> 
> \- The article is an NME spoof, obviously - hence all the bolding. The phrase 'oddly boy' is from Pete's forum post about the sink incident.
> 
> \- The number of rewrites this whole story went through is really ridiculous. In one version the fifth chapter was much shorter, mostly because they didn't have any serious talks and just ran off, leaving Carl's door ajar. 
> 
> \- This is the first thing I've finished that isn't a research paper in literal years, so I'm pretty happy with it. I hope you all liked it too! I'll be posting it on albion-fic after some clean-up, I think.


End file.
